08-04-10 – Farktography Classic: Trees 2

I agree that a lot of captions are waaaaay too long, and to be honest I tend to shy away from voting for them (even if they are good shots) because of that. I will aver that most of us do this for the photography, not to read someone’s photojournal. But, at the same time, ravnostic‘s Tempe Town lake shot is a perfect example: Would I have voted for the picture with no captions? Probably, because it’s an interesting shot and fit the theme. On the other hand, given the location and the newsworthy context also made it a much more interesting picture, which is also something that’s important to me as a viewer. That said, if it were a crappy picture, I wouldn’t have voted for it if it were the bloody Queen of Sheba.

And some shots are just so esoteric (many of mine included) that without a title of some sort to get the viewer thinking along the lines of the photographer, it can be difficult to see why the Farktographer thought that particular picture fit the theme – which is one of the main criteria I look for when voting.

*deep breath*

As far as popping larger (specifically for this contest)…I don’t have a problem with it. Most people don’t clicky-pop unless they were already inclined to vote for the shot in the first place. And honestly, I can only think of one picture in the two years I’ve done this where it influenced voting at all – I think it was Ranger Joe‘s but I can’t remember the contest now. Besides, you’d effectively have to say that no one that uses an image host that requires linkbacks (like Flickr) can participate, and I think that’s just a bad idea.

This theme’s requirement against captions was the original theme suggester’s intent a year or 18 months ago, and I just left it in there since that was the original theme description.

Who was this person, anyways? Usually you give credit for these things.

I’m looking forward to entering this one…seems like a good theme to just back into farktography.

And some shots are just so esoteric (many of mine included) that without a title of some sort to get the viewer thinking along the lines of the photographer, it can be difficult to see why the Farktographer thought that particular picture fit the theme – which is one of the main criteria I look for when voting.

no knock intend but if a shot is that esoteric/far off theme IMHO it doesn’t deserve votes. now i have used captions to nudge folks to vote but it defeats the purpose of having a theme.

look those that know me know i’m anal about trying to maintain some purity to what i think the contests are all about. and that is first fun but then a place to post your shot at matching this weeks theme. at 640 pixels and all done in camera. and while i like votes as much as the next guy/gal sometimes it seems getting votes takes preference over the fun.

YMMV 🙂

Speaking of file sizes, I thought the in-line photos were restricted to approx 640×480 and then an actual file size also, but I’ve seen pics where the shortest side was like 1100 or something like that. How does that work when I sometimes have to resave my 640 jpg to get the file size down to where it’s accepted?

kashari, Filesize is 640 wide by up to 1100 height. But image size needs to be under 200K–and sometimes, those close to it get rubbed out anyway. Download ‘irfanview’ (do a google–it’s free, it’s safe, it’s good–using it for 10 years no problems–also does a mean job at ‘auto image correcting’ in a pinch) and the plug-ins, one of the plug-ins is ‘save for web’ and it should get you down to a reasonable size.

For example, my ‘pylon’ original that got #1 (insert plug here–yeay, me!) last week started out as a 3888×2592 9.2 megapixel, saved down to a 1200×800 932kb; irfanview got it down to the 640×427 at 85kb (you will be prompted to resize if it’s the original really big shot; elsewise, you can first resize with irfanview’s toys). Depending on the image, you might have to reduce quality from 100 to maybe 80-90, but the result should be fine in 90% of pics.

Oh, ok thanks and congrats!

Oops and now I see now that I wrote my question wrong, meant 1100 longest side, but got it answered right anyway. 😳